Friendship Caught on Fire
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] Fifty different aspects of a friendship, a bond and maybe something more. Fifty parts of a love story spread across time and worlds. Fifty points in time. [Sora/Riku/Kairi]


**A/N:** Written for the 1Sentence challenge using Theme Set Delta. The idea is that you have fifty prompts and can only write one sentence for each based on a certain ship or character. I wanted to stretch my writing muscles again after being out of the game for so long. Plus Kingdom Hearts 3 left my Kairi love feeling ... wanting, so I wrote something that could fit in with canon events while also giving a little window into a might-have-been.

**NB:** These are not a list, nor are they a non-story. They are fifty thematic parts of a single story about Sora/Kairi/Riku collected in one document.

**Feedback:** Always appreciated, forever gratifying. It's nice to know you're not talking just to yourself, y'know?

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**Friendship Caught on Fire**

© Scribbler, February 2019

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_'Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.'_ **~ Bruce Lee**

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_**#01 – Air**_

Her head breaks the ocean surface and she sucks in a mouthful of air, body driving her to survive even as her scrambled mind whirls to remember who she is and why she needs to.

_**#02 – Apples**_

"So … your life advice for me is to live with multiple men and not to accept apples from strangers?" Kairi says dubiously over her teacup to Snow White's solemn nod.

_**#03 – Beginning**_

The grown-ups say she's a little girl who has an accident and washed up on shore, not a monster from the deeps, but as Riku and Sora meet her strangely blank stare they aren't convinced one way or the other.

_**#04 – Bugs**_

"Seriously, guys, clean up after yourselves or you'll get ants," Kairi snaps, but it is the snap of a wet twig when she sees they left dishes unwashed in the sink because they've fallen into an exhausted sleep together on the couch still in their training gear.

_**#05 – Coffee**_

Sora is officially not allowed to have coffee anymore after the Noodle Incident, which Kairi will never let him forget and Riku will never forgive him for.

_**#06 – Dark**_

Sometimes Riku thinks the overwhelming light that constantly shines from within Sora and Kairi will burn away all the darkness within him – and sometimes he is convinced it will just burn all the rest of him away in the process.

_**#07 – Despair**_

When the demon-swarm of Heartless sweep her up and she sees Riku fighting, Sora reaching, and she can't touch either of them or stop them from dying (_ohgodohnononoNONO__**NO**_), it is the purest moment of despair Kairi has ever known and it is enough to break time and space itself.

_**#08 – Doors**_

_I will find you, Sora, and I will bring you home again if it's the last thing I ever do_, Kairi swears, standing on their beach, keyblade flashing with promise.

_**#09 – Drink**_

At the end of a particularly gruelling training session, when Lea has decided to just thrown himself into the ocean to cool off, Riku hands Kairi a drink without needing to be told that what she absolutely wants right now is a grape soda.

_**#10 – Duty**_

Sora has a duty to all worlds that he is acutely, intimately aware of after years of doing it, but what makes him throw himself around Kairi to protect her from Terranort is as far from duty as it is possible to be.

_**#11 – Earth**_

The ground is hard against her back as she lays, winded, from a blow that proved Riku was not kidding when he promised not to hold back in sparring today.

_**#12 – End**_

It all started when he lost her and crossed worlds to find her, and it all ends when she does the same and finds him in return.

_**#13 – Fall**_

When they are ten Sora falls and hits his head so hard he nearly drowns in a rock pool, which scares Riku and Kairi so much they sit in the hospital waiting room and refuse to leave even when the adults try to make them.

_**#14 – Fire**_

Riku watches Kairi comfort Lea when he yet again summons flaming chakrams instead of a keyblade, noting the coaxing tone of her voice and the way it uncurls the angry bundle of folded arms and legs, and he wonders why everyone thinks soft things can't be strong.

_**#15 – Flexible**_

"Why is Kairi skipping out on beach time with us to take a dumb yoga … class … anywayyyyy …?" Sora trails off – and when Riku follows his gaze through the yoga studio window he can understand why.

_**#16 – Flying**_

"Well we wouldn't be late for everything if you two would just let me fly the stupid Gummi ship for once!" Kairi says for approximately the billionth time.

_**#17 – Food**_

"Look, just because I'm the girl doesn't mean it's always up to me to make our lunches!"

_**#18 – Foot**_

Riku grunts so softly that if she wasn't propping him up to keep weight off his broken foot she would not hear it, or roll her eyes, or whisper back, "I'm totally strong enough to do this so stop worrying, _princess_."

_**#19 – Grave**_

The first time Kairi goes back to Radiant Garden to visit her grandmother's grave, she weeps not out of grief for her death, but because even staring at the headstone she has no idea who this woman was, and not even Sora and Riku's embrace can fix that.

_**#20 – Green**_

Being a greenhorn at kissing doesn't really mater if the lips you're pressed against have no idea what they're doing either and none of you care about your inexperience in the way you're probably supposed to.

_**#21 – Head**_

Sora wakes slowly, head aching where he struck the rock, to find Riku and Kairi waiting at his hospital bedside with bags under their eyes and smiles on their faces.

_**#22 – Hollow**_

Sora and Kairi remember, sometimes, dreams of a deep aching in their chests and hair much lighter than their own, and in those moments Riku feels like he is a complete stranger to them and that shared experience he will never know.

_**#23 – Honour**_

They find Hercules kneeling by a sword stuck in the ground inscribed with the words 'embrace your dreams and protect your honour', and somehow even though they don't understand what he is doing, they all hold hands and squeeze as hard as they can, like if they aren't careful enough one of them will be stolen away without warning.

_**#24 – Hope**_

"You don't need to be anything other than what you already are," Kairi tells Sora one night when his worries bubble up from the deepest recesses of him, "because what you already are is Sora, and Sora is what the universe needs right now."

_**#25 – Light**_

"You are just one little light, not even the brightest amongst them," Xemnas states coolly down at her, as if there was never any question whether she could contribute to the fight against Xehanort as much as Sora or Riku or any of the others – and the worst part is that in that moment Kairi _believes_ him.

_**#26 – Lost**_

Kairi refuses to leave her bedroom for a week, which makes her parents allow Riku in unsupervised and makes her do nothing but weep anew when he crawls onto the bed behind her and how much they've lost cuts deeper than ever.

_**#27 – Metal**_

There have been too many times where one of them is struck by a keyblade, but when the cold metal of Xehanort's shatters Kairi into fragments of scattered light, Sora and Riku feel like they are the ones who have been stabbed.

_**#28 – New**_

She had never held a keyblade before but when her own appears in her hand, it feels too right and perfect and _hers_ to feel as new and strange as it probably should.

_**#29 – Old**_

Kairi can see every one of Xehanort's wrinkles under the glob of spit she hucked at him, as he presses his face close to hers, hot breath blowing into her nose, gold eyes tilted in a smile, and whispers that she is going to help him 'motivate' Sora one last time.

_**#30 – Peace**_

Riku experiences a moment of utter, sublime peace when he wakes on their beach and realises Sora and Kairi have each curled into his sides like sleeping protectors against his personal demons.

_**#31 – Poison**_

Riku feels like he has swallowed poison the morning he wakes in his bed and discovers Sora is still dead and Kairi is still missing looking for him and he has no idea how to fix either thing.

_**#32 – Pretty**_

The thing about being a Princess of the Heart is that everyone expects you to be dainty and pretty and graceful and that is really, _really _hard to do if you also need to learn how to throw a good right hook at any future kidnappers.

_**#33 – Rain**_

The night after Sora leaves them in the Keyblade Graveyard, a storm sweeps over Destiny Island and Riku runs outside to find Kairi stumbling out of it without him, screaming and pleading for a reality neither of them can have anymore.

_**#34 – Regret**_

Kairi's biggest regret (_mistake_) will always (_forever, endless, infinite_) be that Sora didn't listen (_you didn't try hard enough with him_) when she told him never to spend his life _(more precious than yours)_ to save hers again.

_**#35 – Roses**_

Queen Minnie says nothing when she entreats Sora to take a rose for his beloved from her garden and he carefully picks two instead of one.

_**#36 – Secret**_

"Kairi, you picked truth, not dare, and you can't change your mind now just because I asked you which boy you like!" Selphie protests.

_**#37 – Snakes**_

Kairi and Mowgli appear from behind snake she just cracked on the head with the butt of her keyblade, scrabbling to free Sora and Riku while muttering about boys and snakes and not being able to trust one with the other.

_**#38 – Snow**_

"Gawrsh, Sora, I just said to think hot thoughts to stay warm, there's no need to blush so hard about … what're you even thinking about, anyhow?"

_**#39 – Solid**_

He is warm and real and solid in her arms and she can't stop holding him and crying because suddenly reality makes sense again.

_**#40 – Spring**_

Springtime in Radiant Garden is a wealth of colour from all the flowers and Kairi takes great delight in buying some from each market stall and making crowns to slip onto Riku and Sora's heads so they can be princesses too.

_**#41 – Stable**_

Riku and Sora's voices echo in her mind (_keep your stance stable, don't telegraph your moves, let your heart be your guiding key_) when Xemnas dumps her in front of Xehanort and for a brief, cruel time he lets her think she can fight him.

_**#42 – Strange**_

Ventus doesn't like talking about Vanitas, but Kairi's sad eyes and strangely bright aura coax admissions from him right up to the point he is about to tell her about the face under the mask and realises telling her would be like killing Sora twice.

_**#43 – Summer**_

To Kairi, summer will always taste of sea-salt ice-cream and feel like sand in her dress and the calloused palms of boys who hold wooden swords too tight for their own good.

_**#44 – Taboo**_

They resolutely Do Not Talk about parents or families or anything like that until Kairi bops them on their heads and says it's okay and not to treat her weird just because she can't remember hers.

_**#45 – Ugly**_

Kairi discovers her own inner ugliness when Riku tries to comfort her and she yells so hard that she creates an expression on his face that never could have appeared there if Sora was still around.

_**#46 – War**_

"Do you understand what you're agreeing to?" Sora asks Kairi when he finds out about Yen Sid's offer, not realising he is asking the exact same question Riku did hours earlier.

_**#47 – Water**_

It takes a lot to get Kairi back into the water after she washes up on shore, but when Riku and Sora stand in the shallows and hold out their hands, she doesn't hesitate to take them.

_**#48 – Welcome**_

"You don't have a birthday," Sora says brightly, holding out the plate, a smear or icing on his cheek to match the one on Riku's forehead, "but 'Happy Day You Came Into Our Lives and Made Them Ten Times Better' didn't fit on the cake."

_**#49 – Winter**_

It is entirely unfair, Sora muses when Yuffie invites them all over to enjoy the first winter snow, that of all the skills she remembers, how to bean someone perfectly with a snowball is the one Kairi likes best.

_**#50 – Wood**_

No campfire will ever be as warm against the night chill as a single blanket stretched across three bodies and three hearts beating as one.


End file.
